The Wager by Anton Chekov is effective as a story because it captures the reader's attention. It begins with a philosophical debate, between the guests of a party whose main debaters are a twenty-five-year-old lawyer and his guest, a wealthy banker, on the question of whether capital punishment is worse than life imprisonment. The plot is gripping. as the lawyer sets out to prove his opinion that life imprisonment is less severe than capital punishment. He accepts the banker's offer of two million rubles if he can "stay in the cell for five years". A twist in the plot is that the lawyer lets his overconfidence get the better of him. Instead of simply accepting the banker's offer of two million rubles for five years' imprisonment, he arrogantly triples the prison term to "fifteen years". The plot is further complicated by the banker saying that the lawyer will surrender after wasting three or four years in prison. his life. The banker argues that "voluntary imprisonment is much heavier than forced imprisonment". The human fickleness of the two protagonists is underlined by the banker's words: “For my part it was the whim of a well-fed man; on the pure greed of lawyers for gold.” But the banker is wrong here, because if the lawyer had been motivated primarily by greed, he would have accepted the banker's initial offer of "two million" to stay in the cell for only "five years". However, the banker believes that this capricious agreement will not “convince people that capital punishment is worse or better than life imprisonment”. This statement further deepens the plot and engages the reader who hopes to discover whether the lawyer's success or failure in his endeavor actually represents a strong argument for... middle of paper... a return to life. However, if the mind and body of a wrongfully convicted person have deteriorated as much as the lawyer's over fifteen years, will the wrongly convicted person benefit much from finally being acquitted and freed? No answer is given by Chekov. Can the reader conclude along with the unnamed “guest” that “they [capital punishment and life imprisonment] are both equally immoral”? In conclusion, this is an excellent short story for the reasons stated above. It promotes the reader's reflection on the psychological aspects of the two types of punishment, and also on the characters of impetuous young lawyers and devious and pathetically immoral bankers. As a first-class story, it must be read several times and every minute detail noted for the reader to fully appreciate this masterpiece..